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Friday, 31 December 2010

I just realised how long it was since I posted here! Not sure where the time has gone. We went to Catriona's on Christmas Day and came home on the Monday so that accounts for a few days. I had to go to work on Wednesday but I've been off since last Thursday. 6 days in a row - unheard of! My colleague had to work on Thursday and Friday but since we close at 12.30 on Christmas eve I had the day off. This week I had to go in from 2-4pm. Might as well have stayed at home. Didn't have a customer in the first half hour and not many after that! Not complaining though.

But I haven't been idle though. I've knitted a jumper for Oliver and started the matching hat and made a start on a cardigan for Poppy. Don't think I've knitted for about a year. I've also tried to keep up with my DT work so that's good after a hectic few weeks. I even made ice cream after work today to use up some cream and eggs. So if anybody wants the easiest ice cream recipe ever let me know and I'll give you the recipe. It came from a friend who used to be a Home Economics lecturer. And it is foolproof lol!!

So all I need to do now is wish you and yours a Happy New Year. I might manage to show my favourite cards from 2010 in the next couple of days if I can tear myself away from my knitting!

Flavouring :- vanilla essence, grated chocolate, chocolate chips, crushed fruit, rind and juice of lemon, liqueur, coffee essence. I used coffee essence the last time I made it and it's lovely. You can easily double the quantities but remember to combine the mixture in a really big bowl!

Whisk the eggs and sugar together to a stable, soft foam. Whip the cream to the same consistency. Mix the egg mixture, cream and any flavouring and place in the freezer in a plastic container with a tight fitting lid.

That's it - simple - no need to take out and beat just leave till frozen and enjoy!

Friday, 24 December 2010

As promised here's an update on the pups. Now just over three months old and getting big! And of course cheeky lol!!

I'm not sure that the 2 pics of the pups with their hide chews are 2 different pups or the same pup in 2 different places! You sometimes have to see the colour of the collar to see what pup's doing what. In the 3rd pic you can see that there are two of them. We eventually settled on Blue and Max. Max wears the red collar! They are very playful and cheeky and do everything together. Great pals but they love to fight too! They're pretty good and they love all this snow. I'd like to get some pics of them in the snow but they're never at peace long enough to get a pic.

Just a wee update on our heating problem. Just before 10am this morning I saw the oil tanker heading our way. Then the phone rang and the driver said he was frightened to come in in case he got stuck. You have to come in a track that goes out to fields to get to our drive. It's not very far but the driver was worried about the verges being soft. Usually they drive in to us and reverse out so he could easily have got stuck. Hubby phoned our neighbour to ask if he had a barrel and he said he'd find something. They filled a tank he uses to take diesel to the combine when he's harvesting and now hubby has to transport the oil to our tank but at least we have oil. Eventually after a lot of effort and bits all over the garage floor he got the boiler lit. But there was a leak! After a lot of time and doing whatever you need to do to fix it he thinks it is either leak free or only a tiny leak. So fingers crossed! The only thing that'll stop us going to Catriona's for Christmas is the snow!! So again fingers crossed.

Good morning everyone. Are you all organised for Christmas? Still not sure what we're doing but not easy to type with crossed fingers lol!

I thought I'd show you my special family cards. I've already shown the card I made for my husband so here are the rest. I made them all A5 since they're for special people.

This is the one I made for my son, Iain.

This is Poppy's card.

Oliver's card.

Mhairi's card.

Catriona and Kerr's card.

And these are the very last cards I made. These are for the teenagers who work in the shop where I work in the Post Office. I had 2 little cards so I thought I'd make another 4 little ones. I used nesties to cut them out. Then of course I didn't have envelopes to fit so I had to make 6 envelopes. Sometimes I'm my own worst enemy lol!

It's a bit of a relief to be finished now. Luckily I finished on Sunday evening before it got too cold to work here. I hope I haven't forgotten anyone. We haven't had any mail since last Wednesday so I can't really tell. I think we should go to the sorting office tomorrow and see if we can get our mail.

I know we all say every year that we're going to start our Christmas cards earlier but this time I really mean it. I know it's nice to use the newest stamps but maybe it would be better to get the cards made with a bit less stress.

Thursday, 23 December 2010

Hi everyone, hope everyone is well and looking forward to Christmas. It is still very snowy here and we had some more snow showers today. It is also very cold. Even colder in my house as we have no heating. Over the last couple of weeks we've been turning the heating lower and lower all over the house but for the last 3 days we've had none at all. Lots of fun when it's so cold. My husband has even been getting up during the night to run the water to make sure it doesn't freeze. The road has also been very bad and I'm not sure I'd have got over to my work this morning if I'd had to drive myself. Hubby was speaking to our neighbour at the farm and he had run out of oil too and was very lucky to get it the other day. He very kindly gave us some of his oil but now we can't get our boiler lit again!! When hubby spoke to the oil distributor the other day they said we had been down to get oil on Tuesday but the driver ran out of hours so we had been put to the end of the queue! I was absolutely furious when I heard that. How could anybody be so cruel not to mention stupid. I don't know about you but I would have thought it would be more sensible to start at the next customer after where you had to stop. We also know from our neighbour that tankers are going back to their depot half-full as they can't get access to some places. How daft is that. You'd think it would be more sensible to ask the drivers what places they know they'll be able to reach. After all these guys visit these places all the time. We've been loyal customers of our supplier for about 30 years since we were in Lanarkshire and since my late father-in-law bought oil from them. I'm not sure I want to stay with them now after this.

What upsets me most is that we were going to spend Christmas with my daughter and son-in-law and grandkids and of course our other daughter and son. Obviously if we have no heating we can't go away and leave the house cos with our luck we'd come back to burst pipes. So I'm feeling a bit low to say the least.

Sorry to be a pain. I'd like to show you some of the cards I haven't had time to blog. Then I'm going to do some knitting to try to take my mind off all my cold bits lol!

The first two are using LOTV cute squares and various embossing folders. These cute squares have been invaluable as time got shorter and shorter.

I made this card using the cute LOTV James bear for my boss to give her grandson for his 1st Christmas.

Some quick cards I made using a sheet of DP, a sentiment stamp some snowflakes and glitter. I got this idea from some cards Carol. Thanks for the inspiration Carol I managed to make some quick cards in time to get them posted for the last recommended day for 2nd class.

These were quite quick too. More of these embossing folders and that large Martha Stewart snowflake punch.

More of these quick cards like the 4 above.

For this one I just embossed lines on the card, added the image, some ribbon, card candy and a sentiment. I love these new LOTV round sentiments.

Another 4 simple cards using LOTV cute squares.

A baby card made using another LOTV cute square. This was for friends who became grandparents recently.

Tomorrow I'll show you the cards I made for my kids and grandkids and the last Christmas cards of all. I might even manage a pic of my 2 lovely black pups.

Tuesday, 21 December 2010

Hi everyone, just a quick post to show you the Advent Calendar I made for Poppy and Oliver. I bought a Kaisercraft kit of Advent calendar and all the DP and bits and pieces needed to make it from Merly Impressions. You have to put together the framework for the calendar and make up all the little drawers but I think it was worth it.

Both sides have a flourish down the side painted in gold. The sides and front of the main framework were also painted in gold.

I made this in a hurry so that I could take it to Catriona in time for the 1st of December. I didn't have time to put anything in the drawers so I think she was going to put some little sweeties in them. Maybe next year I'll be more organised lol.

Poppy was at her preschool Christmas party today and Santa was there so she is quite excited. Apparently she is being good - mostly - just in case!!

Oops nearly forgot about the challenges I'm going to enter with my calendar.

Monday, 20 December 2010

Hi everyone, I've not been around much but at last (I think!) I've finished my Christmas cards. Tonight I thought I'd show you some which were very quick but effective, I think lol. I made very similar cards in red and gold and also in blue and silver. I gave some to the girls at work and they were impressed so that's fine!

There's not a lot to these cards. I loved the DP when I saw it but it was when I was getting short of time and still had about 20 cards to make that I realised what I could do with it.

Well there seems to have been even more snow since I came home from work but on the plus side I only have to work Tuesday, Wednesday and about 15 minutes on Thursday morning and then that's me till the 29th.

On the minus side we've been waiting a few weeks for heating oil and still no sign of it. Could get really cold here, may have to encourage the dogs to sit on my feet.

Thanks for looking and I'll be back tomorrow with some more cards I've made and not had time to post. ﻿

Sunday, 19 December 2010

Good morning from snowy Aberdeenshire. My husband has just spent ages shovelling snow round the house and all down the drive. Then there is a track from the tar road leading to us and past us to another house. He didn't try to clear the track and the car got nearly to the road and then stuck. More shovelling to get back home. He turned and came back because the road was impassable, no other cars or tractors or anything had been on it. Our little back road gets cleared by a tractor and snowplough during the week but obviously not at the weekend cos it wasn't touched yesterday either. So no Sunday papers for us! Unfortunately I'll probably get to work tomorrow. No rest for the wicked! Goodness knows what it would be like if I was wicked lol!!!

I've not been blogging much for a while but I have been busy so I thought I'd show you one of my easy Christmas cards. I made four like this but because I can't make 2 the same I've varied the position of the sentiment and snowflakes.

Thanks for looking, I'm off to investigate a big pot of potato soup. Maybe get some more crafting done this afternoon. My younger daughter phoned for a moan and held me up for about an hour lol! Snow seems to be causing her all sorts of problems in Aberdeen too.

Saturday, 18 December 2010

Good afternoon everyone, sorry to be a bit late with my DT card for Totally Gorjuss. Last night I was trying to get my Christmas cards ready to post and I didn't get to bed till after 2pm. I made what I thought was the last three cards last night. Printed some more inserts, cut them to size and stuck them in the cards. Wrote the cards and put them into the right envelopes (with printed address labels) and hubby stuck on the self-adhesive stamps. Then when I was brushing my teeth this morning I remembered someone who gave me a card, who doesn't usually. So I had to pinch a card from someone I know I won't see until Monday!

Thanks to everyone who entered our last challenge, I enjoyed looking at all your snowy creations. You can find the winner over at Totally Gorjuss you'll also find lots of inspiration there for this challenge. This challenge will run until 7th January 2011 and we hope to see you for our new challenge on 8th January 2011. The lucky winner of this challenge will win a beautiful pack of Me and My Big Ideas paper if Net can bear to let it go lol!

Thanks for looking and I'm off now to make that last card plus maybe a couple of spares. I also need 5 special cards for my kids and grandkids and 4 more for the teenagers who work in the shop in the evenings and at the weekend.

Hope it's not too snowy where you are. It's horrible here. We've had lots of snow and it's drifted badly. Doesn't help that the snow landed on top of ice. Sounds like another shower just now. I've managed to get to work every day though I've had some scary journeys! Worst of it is the bosses don't appreciate it they just take you for granted! Don't know who has the worst job just now, P.O. counter staff or posties. Well in general the posties don't have to deal with people who expect you to stick on their stamps for them. I don't mind 1 or 2 but do I look like I want a furry tongue sticking on other people's stamps?! Not to mention complaining about the cost - well why don't they send gift vouchers? - and turning without even a thank you or goodbye. Sorry rant over! Actually these people are the same all year round and not just at Christmas.

I'll shut up now and get the last of my cards done. I've got a really nasty hack on my thumb and it's very sore so hope I don't bleed on my cards. Mostly this is due to pups being in and out all the time they're awake and me not drying my hands properly. If I can find time I'll need to try to post some pics of them. They're 3 months old now and getting big and even more cheeky.

Monday, 13 December 2010

Hello everyone and thanks to everyone who joined us at Crafty Cardmakers for our White n' Splash challenge. I enjoyed looking at your entries and it was really difficult to choose my favourites.

This time our challenge is "First & Last". We'd like to see the first card you made and your latest or favourite card. I think you'll find, like me, a big difference lol!

The Rules:

You can enter up to 3 times but each must contain a picture of one of your first designs and must be different techniques or items e.g. first card, first stamped card, first scrapbook page, first tag etc. They must also be separate posts.

You can enter your latest creations or your favourites previously published alongside your old design. You can enter in as many other challenges as you wish but many challenges do not accept older creations so just be mindful of that.

I've always made things since I learned to knit and sew at primary school. Then I learned to crochet and do more advanced knitting. I used to love doing Aran knitting and when the kids were little picture patterns like Postman Pat and My Little Pony! I even had a knitting machine at one time. My first cards were, like a lot of people, cross stitch.

In 2006 I went to visit a papermill at Dyce near Aberdeen. They sold beautiful card and other goodies and we were fascinated to look in on a cardmaking class. The lady in charge said a couple of us could make a card so here it is.

This year I've made lots of cards for various challenges and DTs. At the moment I'm up to my ears in Christmas cards but I managed to make cards for my boss and her Mum who had become a Gran and Great-gran in September so wanted something special for baby Logan. The one I made for the proud Great-grandparents is this one.

Bit of a difference isn't there?

I used :-

Image :- Pink Gem.

Background :- Sizzix embossing folders - plaid and snowflakes.

Colouring :- Promarkers.

Card candy :- Craftwork Cards.

Snowflake :- Martha Stewart punch.

Glitter.

If you can find time to join us we'd love to see your "first and last" cards. Do pop over to Crafty Cardmakers and see what my talented teamies have to show you. I'm sure you'll be impressed.

Please feel free to tell me what you think of my cards. Do you think I've improved at all? I think I've learned a lot since I started blogging in June 2009. I still love to enter challenges when I have time. Time is really short just now, I've still quite a few cards to make for Christmas!

Saturday, 11 December 2010

Good morning everyone. Hope not too many of you are still suffering the snow. Yesterday ours got a bit of a shift but there was still a lot of ice and water. Not nice driving on water-covered ice! I'm also a bit nervous about walking on ice especially with 2 daft Labrador pups. I had to put on my wellies to walk on the snow that was left.

Thanks everyone who joined us at Totally Gorjuss last week. Hope you can find time to join us this week for our Snowy Christmas challenge. We are sponsored by Meyer Imports this week. If you're like me and still have Christmas cards to make you can easily join in. So here's my card.